Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[heyjohn]

I recently saw that SM Pro Audio has an application called VFX that is supposed to let you run Windows VSTs on Macintosh.

It's supposed to work with or without their hardware.

Has anyone tried it with Jamstix yet? I checked their list of supported VSTs, and Jamstix isn't there yet...

[heyjohn]

I installed VFX on my MacMini running Snow Leopard, and I was successfully able to install Jamstix3 and install the stock kits. Managed to load a kit, a style, and a drummer, although these were challenging because the popup window kept wanting to move around with the mouse (hitting Escape stopped that eventually).

And it makes sounds when you click on the drums, and hears MIDI input.

Haven't had time to play with it further than that, but it looks promising thus far. Hopefully I'll figure out how to wire it into Studio One or Logic next time (and apply the 3.02 update, as well).

[Old_Shepster]

I'm also very curious if we have a simple Mac work around. I'm not smart enough to use the work around posted here I just import WAV files. Which is still awesome, but if this works with Logic, my prayers are answered.

Gotta give this a try tonight! Thanks for the post!!!

Shep

[heyjohn]

A quick update...

I've not been able to get VFX to do a VST host-start (or whatever it's called) to cause Jamstix to start playing, and I haven't seen a way to get VFX to open as if it were a plain old VST, either. The VFX program seems to be set up as a simple Synth/Effects box to support the hardware that SM sells.

So VFX/Jamstix might work as a drum machine, but that's about it, without additional knowledge or software.

The idea isn't dead yet, though. VFX uses Wine under the hood, and I was able to get Reaper to work, and to host Jamstix. I cheated, telling VFX that Reaper was a VST-installation program

I have Soundflower and MidiPipe -- so if there is a way to wire Reaper/Jamstix under Wine to my usual Mac DAWs (Studio One and Logic), it might work yet. Audio and MIDI from Reaper are certainly showing up in Studio One.

My favorite Jamstix workflow is the unstructured Jam... which will probably be the trickiest thing to configure with this mess.

All of which leaves me wondering... how long until the first Mac-Jamstix beta? I'd much prefer a solution that Just Works rather than turning into a bizarre Computer Science Project. Even if it's only a "_Mostly_ Just Works" solution

And I'd gladly re-purchase Jamstix all over again for a Mac version, if tossing money into a hat can make it happen more quickly. Wiring up stuff that kinda-sorta-might-work isn't fun; playing guitar with Jamstix on drums is fun.

Ralph, do you have even the vaguest hint as to when the first glimmerings of a Mac version might be ready to try out? A few months, sometime this year, sometime next year?

[Ralph [RZ]]

I wish I could take a guess but we are working on overcoming showstopper after showstopper, none of which can be accurately estimated.
_________________
Ralph Zeuner
Rayzoon Technologies LLC
http://www.rayzoon.com

[bluepowder_84]

anyone had any luck with this?

recently shifted to mac and i need jamstix!!

EDIT:
I read a lot of threads about running jamstix 3 on mac os x, my needs are simple - to compose!

If i run crossover etc, and run reaper windows to run jamstix 3, can i import audio into reaper win, compose my drums, output midi out and import the midi into reaper mac and run it into steven slate drums?

[heyjohn]

I've not tried that, but it sounds as if it might be possible. I've not had much time to play around with it since I wrote that.

I still don't have a satisfactory setup for running Jamstix on Mac; I've tried VFX (which uses Wine, which is what Crossover is based on), and two variants of Crossover. Last I tried was with the 3.x series of Reaper for Win/Mac. I still haven't learned all the routing tricks and master/slave-via-MIDI stuff, both of which are prerequisites for this sort of thing. And now Reaper 4.x is out.

I recently had to go dig out the old PC to make it cough back some license codes for other software (so I could use the Mac versions), and it was painful using that setup again. But I arranged things so that I can try doing a Win<->Mac midi connection with no layers of emulation, the next time I have cycles to mess with it.

I'd really rather be running some kind of Jamstix-for-Mac alpha release instead

[Doc]